Chapter 4 investigates the changing faces of Arabness in early Islam. As an identity, Arabness was a fluid intellectual construct, and because Arab communal consciousness developed unevenly in early ...
More

Chapter 4 investigates the changing faces of Arabness in early Islam. As an identity, Arabness was a fluid intellectual construct, and because Arab communal consciousness developed unevenly in early Islam, Muslims faced manifold challenges when they tried to define the word ‘Arab’ and delineate the boundaries of Arab community. The uneven parameters of Arabness and the debates over the identity’s meaning manifest in this chapter’s findings from the evolving dictionary definitions of ʿarabī, the disputes over membership to the Arab community, and the protracted process by which Muslims constructed Arab genealogy by fusing disparate pre-Islamic groups into one consolidated Arab family tree. By the early tenth century AD, Arabic literature articulates a largely cohesive sense of Arab identity and genealogy traced through a succession of ancient prophets, Judaic and Arabian: this chapter questions how that archetype of Arabness emerged by undertaking comprehensive analysis of the earlier disagreements which accompanied the processes of imagining Arabness in Islam’s first centuries.Less

Interpreting Arabs: Defining their Name and Constructing their Family

Peter Webb

Published in print: 2016-06-01

Chapter 4 investigates the changing faces of Arabness in early Islam. As an identity, Arabness was a fluid intellectual construct, and because Arab communal consciousness developed unevenly in early Islam, Muslims faced manifold challenges when they tried to define the word ‘Arab’ and delineate the boundaries of Arab community. The uneven parameters of Arabness and the debates over the identity’s meaning manifest in this chapter’s findings from the evolving dictionary definitions of ʿarabī, the disputes over membership to the Arab community, and the protracted process by which Muslims constructed Arab genealogy by fusing disparate pre-Islamic groups into one consolidated Arab family tree. By the early tenth century AD, Arabic literature articulates a largely cohesive sense of Arab identity and genealogy traced through a succession of ancient prophets, Judaic and Arabian: this chapter questions how that archetype of Arabness emerged by undertaking comprehensive analysis of the earlier disagreements which accompanied the processes of imagining Arabness in Islam’s first centuries.

The early Abbasid Caliphate marked a climax of Arab ethnogenesis. Urbanization, the centralisation of power, and the mixing of populations in cosmopolitan Iraq cultivated fertile ground for Muslim ...
More

The early Abbasid Caliphate marked a climax of Arab ethnogenesis. Urbanization, the centralisation of power, and the mixing of populations in cosmopolitan Iraq cultivated fertile ground for Muslim elites to rally around the banner of Arab identity as a means to maintain their status. This chapter engages models of ethnogenesis to investigate the consolidation of Arab identity under the first Abbasids and provides fresh insight into the significance of the putative Arab-Persian friction (al-shuʿūbiyya). Akin to the formation of ethnic identities elsewhere in the world, the consolidation of an Abbasid-Iraqi Arab identity prompted writers to imagine new origins for their community, forgetting the Arabs’ early Muslim-era ethnogenesis by transplanting their roots into much more ancient pre-Islamic Arabian pasts. This chapter investigates salient aspects of inventing Arab pre-Islamic origins which established paradigms about Arabness that persist to the present day. The chapter closes with investigation of sweeping societal changes in Iraq after AD 800, when a remarkable retreat from Arabness began: Muslims shifted from identifying themselves as ‘Arabs’, fundamentally altering the definition of Arabness in the process.Less

Arabs as a People and Arabness as an Idea: 750–900 CE

Peter Webb

Published in print: 2016-06-01

The early Abbasid Caliphate marked a climax of Arab ethnogenesis. Urbanization, the centralisation of power, and the mixing of populations in cosmopolitan Iraq cultivated fertile ground for Muslim elites to rally around the banner of Arab identity as a means to maintain their status. This chapter engages models of ethnogenesis to investigate the consolidation of Arab identity under the first Abbasids and provides fresh insight into the significance of the putative Arab-Persian friction (al-shuʿūbiyya). Akin to the formation of ethnic identities elsewhere in the world, the consolidation of an Abbasid-Iraqi Arab identity prompted writers to imagine new origins for their community, forgetting the Arabs’ early Muslim-era ethnogenesis by transplanting their roots into much more ancient pre-Islamic Arabian pasts. This chapter investigates salient aspects of inventing Arab pre-Islamic origins which established paradigms about Arabness that persist to the present day. The chapter closes with investigation of sweeping societal changes in Iraq after AD 800, when a remarkable retreat from Arabness began: Muslims shifted from identifying themselves as ‘Arabs’, fundamentally altering the definition of Arabness in the process.

Arab identity is an intriguing conundrum. It is commonly presumed that Arabs originated as a distinct and essentially homogenous community of ancient Arabian Bedouin who were separate from other ...
More

Arab identity is an intriguing conundrum. It is commonly presumed that Arabs originated as a distinct and essentially homogenous community of ancient Arabian Bedouin who were separate from other populations of the Middle East, yet modern Arab identity is multifarious and resists all scholarly attempts to generalise about Arabness. It thus seems that pre-modern Arabs are too simplistically conceptualised around monolithic stereotypes of Arabian nomadism, and the idea of ancient Arab identity is accordingly in need of new, theoretically grounded and critical scrutiny. The task inspires this book, and the Introduction sets the scene by discussing the problems of interpreting Arab history, and describes the theoretical models that can help resolve these problems. Ancient Arabs have not hitherto been studied as an ethnic group, and the Introduction discusses how anthropological theories of ethnogenesis enable fresh interpretation of textual and archaeological evidence to reorient our understanding of both Arab origins and the rise of Islam.Less

Introduction

Peter Webb

Published in print: 2016-06-01

Arab identity is an intriguing conundrum. It is commonly presumed that Arabs originated as a distinct and essentially homogenous community of ancient Arabian Bedouin who were separate from other populations of the Middle East, yet modern Arab identity is multifarious and resists all scholarly attempts to generalise about Arabness. It thus seems that pre-modern Arabs are too simplistically conceptualised around monolithic stereotypes of Arabian nomadism, and the idea of ancient Arab identity is accordingly in need of new, theoretically grounded and critical scrutiny. The task inspires this book, and the Introduction sets the scene by discussing the problems of interpreting Arab history, and describes the theoretical models that can help resolve these problems. Ancient Arabs have not hitherto been studied as an ethnic group, and the Introduction discusses how anthropological theories of ethnogenesis enable fresh interpretation of textual and archaeological evidence to reorient our understanding of both Arab origins and the rise of Islam.

Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history by marshalling ...
More

Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history by marshalling the widest array of Arabic sources employed hitherto, and by interpreting the evidence with the aid of theories of identity and ethnicity, Imagining the Arabs proposes new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history. It is revealed that the time-honoured stereotypes which depict Arabs as ancient Arabian Bedouin are entirely misleading because the essence of Arab identity was in fact devised by Muslims during the first centuries of Islam. Arab identity emerged and evolved as groups imagined new notions of community to suit the radically changing circumstances of life in the early Caliphate. The idea of ‘the Arab’ was a device which Muslims utilised to articulate their communal identity, to negotiate post-Conquest power relations, and to explain the rise of Islam. Over Islam’s first four centuries, political elites, genealogists, poetry collectors, historians and grammarians all participated in a vibrant process of imagining and re-imagining Arab identity and history, and the sum of their works established a powerful tradition that influences Middle Eastern communities to the present day.Less

Imagining the Arabs : Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

Peter Webb

Published in print: 2016-06-01

Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history by marshalling the widest array of Arabic sources employed hitherto, and by interpreting the evidence with the aid of theories of identity and ethnicity, Imagining the Arabs proposes new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history. It is revealed that the time-honoured stereotypes which depict Arabs as ancient Arabian Bedouin are entirely misleading because the essence of Arab identity was in fact devised by Muslims during the first centuries of Islam. Arab identity emerged and evolved as groups imagined new notions of community to suit the radically changing circumstances of life in the early Caliphate. The idea of ‘the Arab’ was a device which Muslims utilised to articulate their communal identity, to negotiate post-Conquest power relations, and to explain the rise of Islam. Over Islam’s first four centuries, political elites, genealogists, poetry collectors, historians and grammarians all participated in a vibrant process of imagining and re-imagining Arab identity and history, and the sum of their works established a powerful tradition that influences Middle Eastern communities to the present day.

By unfastening Arab identity from conventional cultural stereotypes, Bedouinism and ancient pre-Islamic Arabian bloodlines, this book sought to reveal the complexities and changing nature of historic ...
More

By unfastening Arab identity from conventional cultural stereotypes, Bedouinism and ancient pre-Islamic Arabian bloodlines, this book sought to reveal the complexities and changing nature of historic Arab identity. The book was intended as an invitation to begin rethinking Arabness afresh, and by highlighting the shortcomings inherent in the static, monolithic manner in which historical Arab communities have often been discussed, our analysis sought to reappraise historic Arabness as an ethnicity, tracking its evolution and contextualising its development with close attention to the sociopolitical and ‘cultural stuff’ factors that sustain ethnogenesis....Less

Imagining and Reimagining the Arabs: Conclusions

Peter Webb

Published in print: 2016-06-01

By unfastening Arab identity from conventional cultural stereotypes, Bedouinism and ancient pre-Islamic Arabian bloodlines, this book sought to reveal the complexities and changing nature of historic Arab identity. The book was intended as an invitation to begin rethinking Arabness afresh, and by highlighting the shortcomings inherent in the static, monolithic manner in which historical Arab communities have often been discussed, our analysis sought to reappraise historic Arabness as an ethnicity, tracking its evolution and contextualising its development with close attention to the sociopolitical and ‘cultural stuff’ factors that sustain ethnogenesis....

This essay is a history of video games in the Arab World, and it contains a description of the Arabian video game industry and how it has grown. Descriptions of video game companies and individual ...
More

This essay is a history of video games in the Arab World, and it contains a description of the Arabian video game industry and how it has grown. Descriptions of video game companies and individual video games are also given. The essay explains how the Arabian video game industry has grown and what it is like today.Less

Arab World

Radwan Kasmiya

Published in print: 2015-06-03

This essay is a history of video games in the Arab World, and it contains a description of the Arabian video game industry and how it has grown. Descriptions of video game companies and individual video games are also given. The essay explains how the Arabian video game industry has grown and what it is like today.